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Thursday, November 30, 2006 |
FAO: "According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent - 18 percent - than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation.
With increased prosperity, people are consuming more meat and dairy products every year. Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes."
And I suppose those driving SUVs are the fattest consumers of meat.
The CO2 pollution map.
The Great Warming (video).
12:25:52 PM 
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Nether-World: "If Tony Blair thought the issue of Extraordinary Rendition was going away, he must be pretty disappointed. The draft report on extraordinary rendition following the investigation by MEPs has shown that Britain has allowed 170 secret CIA torture flights, second only to Germany's whopping 336 flights out of at least 1,245 flights in European territory. Ten countries are accused of allowing stopovers. They are:
Germany 336
Britain 170
Ireland 147
Portugal 91
Spain 68
Greece 64
Cyprus 57
Italy 46
Romania 21
Poland 11
Poland has come in for particular criticism because there is good circumstantial evidence that one of the 'Black sites' that President Bush has acknowledged exist is located in the Polish intelligence training centre at Stare Kiejkuty."
12:18:25 PM
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AlJazeera: "Bolivia's Senate met in a surprise session late on Tuesday and quickly passed a controversial land redistribution bill after opposition unity collapsed in the face of marches for weeks by thousands of landless Indians in support of the measure."
Another blow to Bush.
Yahoo: "A federal judge struck down President Bush's authority to designate groups as terrorists, saying his post-Sept. 11 executive order was unconstitutional and vague."
AlterNet: "George W insists that he has made America 'strong and safe', referring to the hundreds of billions of dollars he has dumped into Iraq and homeland security. Actually, he has failed the strength and safety test even on his foreign watch. But internally - where such essential physical networks as schools, dams, water systems, libraries, power lines, rails, parks, and airports are the vertebrae of our nation's backbone - the no-tax/no-government mantra of Bushite ideologues (with the complicity of spineless Democrats in Congress) has left America a fragile and vulnerable nation."
Americans, take America back!
12:10:03 PM
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BelfastTelegraph: "Alexander Litvinenko told the Italian academic he met on the day he fell ill that he had organised the smuggling of nuclear material out of Russia for his security service employers.
Mario Scaramella, who flew into London yesterday to be interviewed by Scotland Yard officers investigating Mr Litvinenko's death, said Mr Litvinenko told him about the operation for the FSB security service, the successor to the KGB.
Police said that Mr Scaramella, who met Mr Litvinenko at a sushi bar in London on 1 November to discuss a death threat aimed at both of them, was a potential witness. He was being interviewed at a 'secure location' in London but was not in custody.
In an interview with The Independent shortly after the poisoning became public, Mr Scaramella said that Mr Litvinenko, a friend and professional contact since 2001, told him he had masterminded the smuggling of radioactive material to Zurich in 2000. There have long been concerns that turmoil in Russia and other former Soviet states after the fall of Communism created an international black market in radioactive substances.
The operation would have been one of the last carried out by Mr Litvinenko while still an FSB officer, in a unit tackling organised crime and smuggling. He fled Russia for London that year after the FSB began investigating him for corruption - charges which he claimed were invented as revenge for his decision to expose an FSB plot to assassinate the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky.
Friends of Mr Litvinenko, a critic of the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, said last night that they were unaware of his involvement with any smuggling for the FSB. Alex Goldfarb, an ally of Mr Berezovsky, said: 'He did not mention anything about nuclear material while serving with the FSB.'
Mr Scaramella, an academic and examining magistrate based in Rome and Naples, had been due to meet Mr Litvinenko on 10 November in London, but brought the meeting forward at short notice on 1 November. The Itsu restaurant in Piccadilly, where traces of polonium-210 have been found, is thought to be the first location visited by Mr Litvinenko on 1 November.
Later he met two Russian business associates at a Mayfair hotel and visited the nearby offices of Mr Berezovsky and a security firm, where polonium traces have also been found. Last night police confirmed that they were searching the five-star Sheraton Park Lane Hotel in Mayfair as well as an office building in the West End.
Mr Scaramella has denied any involvement in his friend's death and derided suggestions that he was himself a Russian agent. He claims that he has long been involved in investigating the smuggling of radioactive material by the KGB and its successors. He claimed last year that Soviet destroyers had laid 20 nuclear torpedoes in the Bay of Naples in 1970, where they remain."
Some observations here:
Now that the possibility of nuclear smuggling is gaining credibility, some people seem very intent on still blaming the Russian secret service.
If Litvinenko smuggled nuclear material for the FSB and was contaminated at that time, he would have died long ago.
Scaramella's assertion that he met Litvinenko to discuss a death threat to them both is nonsense. You don't go to a public place to discuss this kind of thing.
If Mr Litvinenko was investigated in Russia for corruption it is highly probably that was because Litvinenko was involved in illegal nuclear trafficking. It is impossible that a true anti-Putinist like Litvinenko (and Berezovky) would continue to work for the FSB.
Litvinenko's contamination must have been very recent. And his dubious contacts (Berezovsky) and other contacts (Scaramella) all seem to be involved in 'nuclear material'.
Let's be honest, people like Litvinenko and Berezovky are not journalists or businessmen, they are crooks and very dangerous ones at that.
Now that it becomes clear Litvinenko was a nuclear smuggler they try to put the blame on the FSB again. But these people had to flee Russia because they were involved in shady business deals. Apparently, once in the West they were allowed to continue their illegal trafficking, which was most successful under the cloak of their anti-Russian activities, and Britain let it happen.
Instead of blaming the FSB, Europe would do better to cooperate with the Russians to eradicate the illegal nuclear trafficking that is still taking place. And it is sure Litvinenko and Berezovsky are not Russian FSB agents. So they must be involved in illegal nuclear trafficking. How else do you make a fortune as an ex-Russian?
11:44:24 AM
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